Looking for advice on dealing with Network latancy and disconnects

Posted 06 July 2007 - 01:05 AM

I have written a system for the gaming industry that processes hundred of small files (under 400 bytes). I was told orginally that all users would connect via ADSL. The system uses a file watcher on a share that is connected over a VPN. Now I find that some of the users are using GPRS and 3G.

I have implemented threads throughout the program and have found that when there is bad latency the base process hangs until the connection is cleared. I have also found that if the link drops, the OS does not seem to reconnect correctly.

Does anyone have experience with similar issues and advice on how to sense the connection problem. I have try ..... catch blocks in the code that log to the event viewer, nothing is ever logged. 8 times out of 10 the application handles the latency issue. It never recovers from a disconnect, even if you reconnect manually.

Any ideas? I am at a loss due to the fact that the try .... catch blocks do not seem to see this.

Is there a way to set a time out on a file.open operation or the creation of a stream object?